Peter MacKay, the pleasant-looking man we see on TV as the outraged voice of the Conservatives at the sponsorship hearings, who talks a lot about Liberal lies, hypocrisy, untrustworthiness — he looks a lot like that other Peter MacKay, the one who signed an agreement in the fall, on national TV, in order to win the leadership of the old Progressive Conservative Party.

That Peter MacKay solemnly pledged there would be no merger between his party and the Canadian Alliance of Stephen Harper. It was a bold move. Then he broke his word, with no qualms, as if that were normal practice. No, it can’t be him. Or he’d look at least a tad embarrassed when he says things like: “When will the Prime Minister simply keep his word..?”

(I especially like the “simply.”) And if he weren’t abashed himself, surely those who interview him on the news shows, would interrupt as he accuses others of hypocrisy and say, “Um, excuse me, sir, but aren’t you the Peter Mackay who . . .”

Still, that pales compared to Paul Martin himself, who vowed last week to change “the way Ottawa works . . . come hell or high water,” as if he were not the same man who anchored that regime for almost its entire term. Why doesn’t he say: “I’m mad as hell at me, and I’m fired”? Where does this failure to remember come from? We have mountains of information, and apparently zero ability to use it. Twenty-four-hour news, websites, search engines — so much is coming at us that there is no room to recall, compare, analyze. It’s as if new information cancels out past knowledge. If you can’t remember what someone said a month ago — or what you said yourself — in what sense are you even talking about the same person?

Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor at the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic, says, “I don’t have the smoking gun on the [charge] of genocide.” Excuse me? Doesn’t this at least call for one monstrous international double-take? The trauma of Yugoslavia’s breakup was the riveting tale of the entire 1990s. And the centrepiece of its presentation was Milosevic as Hitler, full stop. Ms. del Ponte says she remains “convinced of the culpability of Milosevic for genocide,” much as George W. Bush and Tony Blair remain sure Iraq had those WMDs (or the cops who charged any number of prisoners acquitted due to DNA remain certain the guy did it). But she lacks “evidence to convince the judges.”

There was no such lack at Nuremberg, had Hitler been around for trial. Her “problem” is that a genocide charge requires “specific intent.” And while everyone knows there were atrocities on all sides, the utterly dominant narrative, if anyone recalls it, said that genocide was deliberate Serbian government policy. That was the basis on which the world was mobilized over Bosnia, then Kosovo. Without it, there would have been no NATO attack. Now the NATO commander sending troops into Kosovo last week to stop Albanian attacks on Serbs calls what is happening “ethnic cleansing,” the very thing NATO went in to stop.

Globalization, that other international obsession of the 1990s — is it also slipping down the memory hole? You’d think so, from the panicky Globe editorial reaction (His Excellency’s Drivel) to John Ralston Saul’s article in Harper‘s, “The Collapse Of Globalism.”

Even more revolting to them, might be the nightly tirades against free trade and globalization by CNN’s business stalwart, Lou Dobbs. Lou looks like he was born on Wall Street and never left. In one sense, capitalism is globalism: Its endless drive to increase profit forces it to constantly seek and open new markets. But the form that drive took in recent years was particular: break down legal and political barriers between nations, undermine their traditional sovereignty, replace them with institutions like the World Trade Organization and faceless regulators unaccountable in any democratic way.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but that undemocratic touch raised untidy opposition in places like Seattle, Quebec City and Latin America. So, with admirable flexibility, big business may be turning away from the globalization route. After all, the point is to keep hiking profits, not to keep faith with globalization. But what replaces it? Well, you might invade a resource-rich, weak country like Iraq, grab its oil reserves, distribute big reconstruction contracts to your corporations, set up a puppet government etc. It’s worked before. If that breaks down after a while, try something else to maintain profits — maybe globalization again. This is capitalism’s unique form of restless forgetfulness. Who could object?

Only the ideologues, those who live by justifying and explaining what others do: economists, pundits and so forth. They can’t as easily move on. Their credibility and self-esteem rest on being right about the ideas they propound. You can hear them howl like stuck pigs.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.